Persistence of income inequality : does child mortality matter?

Many developing countries are afflicted by persistent inequality in the distribution of income. While a growing body of literature emphasizes differential fertility as a channel through which income inequality persists, this paper investigates differential child mortality – differences in the incidence of child mortality across socioeconomic groups – as a critical link in this regard. Using evidence from cross-country data to evaluate this linkage, we find that differential child mortality serves as a stronger channel than differential fertility in the transmission of income inequality over time. We use random effects and generalized estimating equations techniques to account for temporal correlation within countries. The results are robust to the use of an alternate definition of fertility that reflects parental preference for children instead of realized fertility.

Mortality, fertility, and persistent income inequality

Many developing countries are plagued by persistent inequality in income distribution. While a growing body of economic-demographic literature emphasizes differential fertility channel, this paper investigates differential child mortality--differences in child mortality across income groups--as a critical link through which income inequality persists. Using an overlapping generations model in which both child mortality and fertility are endogenously determined by parental choice, this paper demonstrates that differential child mortality and its interaction with differential fertility may generate an "income inequality trap." The trap is characterized by higher child mortality and lower degree of skill formation among the poorer households. The model can also explain the behavior of aggregate fertility and mortality rates for countries at various stages of development, consonant with patterns of demographic transition. The results indicate that provision of public health that raises the productivity of private health spending may be an effective way to reduce income inequality

Income Inequality and Healt: A Multi-Country Analysis

This paper investigates the effect of income inequality on health status. A model of health status was specified in which the main variables were income level, income inequality, the level of savings and the level of education. The model was estimated using a panel data set for 44 countries covering six time periods. The results indicate that income inequality (measured by the Gini coefficient) has a significant effect on health status when we control for the levels of income, savings and education. The relationship is consistent regardless of the specification of health status and income. Thus, the study results provide some empirical support for the income inequality hypothesis.

Income inequality in the process of economic development : An empirical approach

This thesis studies the effect of income inequality on economic growth. This is done by analyzing panel data from several countries with both short and long time dimensions of the data. Two of the chapters study the direct effect of inequality on growth, and one chapter also looks at the possible indirect effect of inequality on growth by assessing the effect of inequality on savings. In Chapter two, the effect of inequality on growth is studied by using a panel of 70 countries and a new EHII2008 inequality measure. Chapter contributes on two problems that panel econometric studies on the economic effect of inequality have recently encountered: the comparability problem associated with the commonly used Deininger and Squire s Gini index, and the problem relating to the estimation of group-related elasticities in panel data. In this study, a simple way to 'bypass' vagueness related to the use of parametric methods to estimate group-related parameters is presented. The idea is to estimate the group-related elasticities implicitly using a set of group-related instrumental variables. The estimation results with new data and method indicate that the relationship between income inequality and growth is likely to be non-linear. Chapter three incorporates the EHII2.1 inequality measure and a panel with annual time series observations from 38 countries to test the existence of long-run equilibrium relation(s) between inequality and the level of GDP. Panel unit root tests indicate that both the logarithmic EHII2.1 inequality measure and the logarithmic GDP per capita series are I(1) nonstationary processes. They are also found to be cointegrated of order one, which implies that there is a long-run equilibrium relation between them. The long-run growth elasticity of inequality is found to be negative in the middle-income and rich economies, but the results for poor economies are inconclusive. In the fourth Chapter, macroeconomic data on nine developed economies spanning across four decades starting from the year 1960 is used to study the effect of the changes in the top income share to national and private savings. The income share of the top 1 % of population is used as proxy for the distribution of income. The effect of inequality on private savings is found to be positive in the Nordic and Central-European countries, but for the Anglo-Saxon countries the direction of the effect (positive vs. negative) remains somewhat ambiguous. Inequality is found to have an effect national savings only in the Nordic countries, where it is positive.

Inequality for Wage Earners and Self-Employed: Evidence from Panel Data

Published as an article in: Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 2009, vol. 71, issue 4, pages 491-518.

Income, inequality, and criteria air pollutants in the CAMA counties

Socioeconomic factors have long been incorporated into environmental research to examine the effects of human dimensions on coastal natural resources. Boyce (1994) proposed that inequality is a cause of environmental degradation and the Environmental Kuznets Curve is a proposed relationship that income or GDP per capita is related with initial increases in pollution followed by subsequent decreases (Torras and Boyce, 1998). To further examine this relationship within the CAMA counties, the emission of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, as measured by the EPA in terms of tons emitted, the Gini Coefficient, and income per capita were examined for the year of 1999. A quadratic regression was utilized and the results did not indicate that inequality, as measured by the Gini Coefficient, was significantly related to the level of criteria air pollutants within each county. Additionally, the results did not indicate the existence of the Environmental Kuznets Curve. Further analysis of spatial autocorrelation using ArcMap 9.2, found a high level of spatial autocorrelation among pollution emissions indicating that relation to other counties may be more important to the level of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions than income per capita and inequality. Lastly, the paper concludes that further Environmental Kuznets Curve and income inequality analyses in regards to air pollutant levels incorporate spatial patterns as well as other explanatory variables. (PDF contains 4 pages)

Income tax progressivity, growth, income inequality and welfare

This paper analyzes the effects of personal income tax progressivity on long-run economic growth, income inequality and social welfare. The quantitative implications of income tax progressivity increments are illustrated for the US economy under three main headings: individual effects (reduced labor supply and savings, and increased dispersion of tax rates); aggregate effects (lower GDP growth and lower income inequality); and welfare effects (lower dispersion of consumption across individuals and higher leisure levels, but also lower growth of future consumption). The social discount factor proves to be crucial for this third effect: a higher valuation of future generations' well-being requires a lower level of progressivity. Additionally, if tax revenues are used to provide a public good rather than just being discarded, a higher private valuation of such public goods will also call for a lower level of progressivity.

Nations' income inequality predicts ambivalence in stereotype content: How societies mind the gap

Income inequality undermines societies: The more inequality, the more health problems, social tensions, and the lower social mobility, trust, life expectancy. Given people's tendency to legitimate existing social arrangements, the stereotype content model (SCM) argues that ambivalence-perceiving many groups as either warm or competent, but not both-may help maintain socio-economic disparities. The association between stereotype ambivalence and income inequality in 37 cross-national samples from Europe, the Americas, Oceania, Asia, and Africa investigates how groups' overall warmth-competence, status-competence, and competition-warmth correlations vary across societies, and whether these variations associate with income inequality (Gini index). More unequal societies report more ambivalent stereotypes, whereas more equal ones dislike competitive groups and do not necessarily respect them as competent. Unequal societies may need ambivalence for system stability: Income inequality compensates groups with partially positive social images. © 2012 The British Psychological Society.

Parallel Time Series Analysis and Income Inequality: A New Approach to Comparative Case Studies

This case study deals with the role of time series analysis in sociology, and its relationship with the wider literature and methodology of comparative case study research. Time series analysis is now well-represented in top-ranked sociology journals, often in the form of ‘pooled time series’ research designs. These studies typically pool multiple countries together into a pooled time series cross-section panel, in order to provide a larger sample for more robust and comprehensive analysis. This approach is well suited to exploring trans-national phenomena, and for elaborating useful macro-level theories specific to social structures, national policies, and long-term historical processes. It is less suited however, to understanding how these global social processes work in different countries. As such, the complexities of individual countries - which often display very different or contradictory dynamics than those suggested in pooled studies – are subsumed. Meanwhile, a robust literature on comparative case-based methods exists in the social sciences, where researchers focus on differences between cases, and the complex ways in which they co-evolve or diverge over time. A good example of this is the inequality literature, where although panel studies suggest a general trend of rising inequality driven by the weakening power of labour, marketisation of welfare, and the rising power of capital, some countries have still managed to remain resilient. This case study takes a closer look at what can be learned by applying the insights of case-based comparative research to the method of time series analysis. Taking international income inequality as its point of departure, it argues that we have much to learn about the viability of different combinations of policy options by examining how they work in different countries over time. By taking representative cases from different welfare systems (liberal, social democratic, corporatist, or antipodean), we can better sharpen our theories of how policies can be more specifically engineered to offset rising inequality. This involves a fundamental realignment of the strategy of time series analysis, grounding it instead in a qualitative appreciation of the historical context of cases, as a basis for comparing effects between different countries.

Financial development and income inequality: evidence from African countries

This paper present empirical evidence on how financial development is related to income distribution in a panel data set covering 22 African countries for the period between 1990 to 2004. A dynamic panel estimation technique (GMM) is employ and the findings indicate that income inequality decrease as economies develop their financial sector, which is consistent with the bulk of theoretical and empirical research. The result also confirm that educational attainment play a significant role in making income distribution more equal. We also find no evidence supporting the Greenwood-Jovanovic hypothesis of an inverted-U- shaped relationship between financial sector development and inequality.